Sherlock is one of the most entertaining shows on television.
For the first two seasons, it was probably one of the best shows, as well, despite it’s limited format; as a BBC production, each season is three 90 minute episodes. When it debuted in 2010, it was hard to predict that the show’s leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, would go on to become major box office players, but that’s where we are, after Freeman took the lead in The Hobbit trilogy, while Benedict Cumberbatch has scored an Oscar nomination for The Imitation Game, played the villain in Star Trek Beyond, and is set to rake in that sweet Marvel box office this fall as Doctor Strange.
Now, the show is better off for having cast these two actors, from a quality perspective. But their busy schedules makes it tough to film what amount to three films to constitute a full season of the show. Season 3 was on the air in early 2014, while there was a Christmas special episode that debuted on New Year’s 2016. All ten episodes of the show are now available on Netflix, if you need to catch up. If you want to do it before the fourth season, you’ll have through the end of the year; a trailer for the upcoming season just dropped, and it promises a release date in 2017. And it looks suitably mysterious:
Essentially, if you’re unfamiliar, it’s an update of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to a modern-day setting, and it’s incredibly well-done. The first and third episode of the first two seasons would have all been among the better theatrical films released in those years. The middle episode has a tendency to lag, as it’s generally not connected to the season’s overall mystery, and the third season overall suffered a bit from repetition and a few unfortunate gay panic jokes.
However! This is all a sliding scale, as the worst of Sherlock tends to be better than most genre television, and at its best, it’s simply stunning. I give it my full Netflix endorsement.
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